Fresh water scarcity: An introduction to the problem - Christiana Z. Peppard

Fresh water is essential for life -- and there's not nearly enough of it for the world right now. Why is that, and what could we do? Christiana Z. Peppard lays out the big questions of our global water problem. And no, shorter showers are not the answer.

Lesson by Christiana Z. Peppard, animation by Jeremy Collins.

[Tamizushi]

What's interesting with this argument is that it's proportional. e.g. if eating x amount of meat wastes y amount of resource, then eating 0.5x amount of meat wastes 0.5y amount of resource. Therefore, while taking this argument to its extreme would lead you all the way to vegetarianism (and even to veganism) if we are just ready to reduce our consumption to a more reasonable amount, the argument still works.

[abyni]

People, you are not sharing this channel enough, please share it, people need to learn.

[ssj]

We read books, hear stories and watch films about apocalyptic scenarios to humor and frighten ourselves. Now we are facing an event which is more disastrous than any film, yet we shrug it off as if it is just the ramblings of a few crazy people. I'm only 16 but the future I will be a part of scares the hell out of ne!

[palmfrond]

There is some information here, but mostly, this video just made me anxious. Not just with all the unanswered questions it raises, but also, maybe next time, get a voice actor to do the narration. No offense. Trust me, I am no model. If I designed clothes, I would hire models instead of modeling the clothes myself. Anyway, I am clicking around the TED website trying to find the rest of this series. (I found only one other video, the one with the droplet, "Where we get our fresh water." But it doesn't answer the questions raised in this video.) I can guarantee you, most people will not even search that far. If you want to educate, don't make it difficult for people to find information.

[Tariena]

There will come a time in life when water is very rare that people and nations would assess wars just to be able to get some.

[jaieet]

Desalination on any significant scale is expensive. Really expensive. And unless you work it into the government budget, it's only going to drive water prices up.
That is a very last ditch effort. Australia went through a serious drought for about 10 years semi-recently. Ended up building a desalination plant. Drought ended, making us look dumb - but we still had to foot a 1.8 billion dollar bill (tax money) for something that is still running (and costing).
Not ideal at all.

[FreeFromWar]

Reason price stays high for something is because there's demand for it. Just because a certain sector can't afford to spend money on a product doesn't stop others to spend money on it.
About gas, like I said, anything that's scarce makes a great business. Now that gas is scarce, it's the best time to keep the demand high and ignoring the alternatives.
If you've seen the movie "Blood diamonds" they tell you how the dealers reduce the supply of diamonds to keep the demand high. Scarcity = Profit

[woodmanequin]

THE NARRATOR SOUND LIKE ITS GONNA CRY THAT MAKES ME SAD IDK WHY

[HDarana]

I'm disappointed now. I thought my little water saving actions, had an effect somewhere. May be helped a few people. I nagged others hours on end, putting forward my point of view, about water consumption. Now I realize that I’m just a fool, pretending to be a savior.

[TheRantsofReason]

Thankfully here in Australia people seem to value water a little more than most due to that large drought we had.. but then again i'm only really speculating from my own feelings about water. not sure about other aussies.

[okj]

Beautiful paragraph, this shit needs to go into everybody's head in America.

[WhoooLovesOrangeSoda]

The reason I was avoiding electricity is because if something were to happen to it, someone else would have to go and fix it and a lot of these places are quite a while a way.

I've been thinking about it and I came up with the idea to use a hand pump and a container that would be 5 glasses full of water.

Have a check valve for pulling the air out, and reverse the valve in the hand pump. Maybe put a lens on it to heat the water with solar power and make it faster.

[toyotaprius]

You should see her previous video. 'Where we get our fresh water - Christina Z.'

[cmpank]

Come to Japan !!
Water is so clean and drinkable!!

[TheLCusi]

A higher price in a certain sector means people will be more willing to invest in other, less expensive ways to do whatever they are doing. People weren't buying electric/hybrid/hydrogen fuel cars 50 years ago because gas was cheap enough that they didn't need to. Now that gas is relatively expensive, people are more willing to spend money on alternatives.

[Tamizushi]

Something you could do to save water is eat less meat. Bovine meat in particular takes about 15, 000 litres of water by kilograms to produce.

[FreeFromWar]

Anything that is profitable for corporations becomes scarce. And when solving the issue threatens the business, corporations will do everything in their power to stop the solution with total disregard for the future of human life

[MrBradJJ]

nice concept! this could be done on a huge scale, imagine we watered a desert and it became teaming with life, not that its cool to play god like that, but it would be possible. it may take a lot of energy to do it that way but if it were solar powered it could just be left going with an constant output of fresh water... im sure someone who knows their chemistry and science could come up with an even more efficient way though.
P.s. dont know why someone is down voting our comments and replies:S

[eugen]

we also need o consider that not all the water used for agriculture dissappears, very much of it goes to fuel lakes and rives and rain etc

[NotDayrising]

Thank you this really changed the way I think about how much water we use🥛